Bethlehem

Bethlehem, “house of bread,” is a small town about five miles south of Jerusalem, earlier called Ephrath, where Rachel died and was buried and where Ruth gleaned in Boaz's fields. It was David's birthplace and the site of his anointing by Samuel, but it is remembered above all as the birthplace of Jesus, foretold in Micah and fulfilled under Herod, whose massacre of the town's young children followed. A church built by Constantine over the traditional birth cave still stands, among the oldest continuously used churches in the world. A separate, minor Bethlehem existed in the territory of Zebulun. A clay seal impression reading “Bethlehem” in ancient Hebrew script, found in Jerusalem's City of David excavations and dated to the seventh century BC, is the earliest known extra-biblical reference to the town.